One story in Philadelphia recently captured a lot of attention. Just before midnight on a Friday two weeks ago, a SEPTA police officer found 2-year-old Jeremiyah wandering in LOVE Park, alone. He had no shoes and no coat, despite the fact it was one of the coldest nights of the fall season thus far. The officer contacted the city Department of Human Services; a worker took Jeremiyah to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for evaluation and subsequently placed him in foster care. A few hours later his parents, Michael Jones and Angelique Roland, who had been sleeping in a cardboard box with Jeremiyah and his 4-year-old sister, Malaysia, woke up. The parents panicked when they realized Jeremiyah was missing and contacted authorities. Within a few hours, Malaysia, too, was in the city’s care.Read more athttp://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/Is-poverty-a-crime.html#2KPUgYThqyKrTVRs.99

Image courtesy of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the nation’s registered professional nurses. First the ladies on the popular television show The View disparaged the country’s nurses by critiquing a Miss America contestant, a professional registered nurse, who dressed as a nurse and carried one of the tools of her trade, her stethoscope. Many of the country’s 3.2 million professional nurses, quickly took to social media to correct the negative impressions the ladies of The View held about nurses. Apologies followed.

On August 19th, the Editorial Board of the New York Times noted the Obama administration’s commitment to expanding community health centers and stabilizing the funding streams that support the salaries of the doctors “and other health professionals” who work to bring high quality primary care to poor urban neighborhoods and isolated rural ones. These health centers are indeed a lifeline for so many individuals, families, and communities. But they have a history that pre-dates federal involvement either through President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty or President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Image Courtesy of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing.

July 30th marks the 50-year anniversary of the signing into law, by President Lyndon Johnson the Medicare and Medicaid legislation; legislation which profoundly opened up health care access to millions of Americans. Before we celebrate too loudly about this singular achievement which has improved the lives of our citizens both young and old, let’s remember that there are still many Americans left without adequate access to health care.

Americans prefer stories about our most vulnerable youngsters to have a happy ending, like the comic book character “Little Orphan Annie,” so popular that she returned as a musical and was recently remade into the move “Annie” It allows us to indulge in the fantasy that plucky orphans and foster children benefit less from governmental investment (one that might require increasing taxes and more infrastructure) and more from wealthy larger-than-life private citizen rescuers like “Daddy Warbucks” (the comic strip) or “Will Stacks” (the 2014 movie).

The U.S. Response to Throwaway Children:
From Orphan Trains to the Current Migrant Crisis

The United States has historically faced the challenge of responding to the needs of children without parents to provide for their care. The Orphan Train provides a historical context for today’s social, moral and legal crisis created by large numbers of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at our borders.